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This study investigates how place management is used to render a creative city through the combination of soft factors as intangible characteristics and hard factors as tangible characteristics of the built environment. The study focuses on Izmir, Turkey; exploring its potential as an emerging creative city. The methodology is a descriptive analysis of recent urban design and planning activities of creative cities, reviews projects and strategies in Izmir. Findings provide a framework for place management tools and their strategic use for integration of art, design, creativity and knowledge in creative cities. Place management is used as a tool for image building and identity enhancement, and for quality of place to attract creative and knowledge workers. In the case of Izmir, hard factors triggered the formation process whereas soft factors have taken strengthen the initiative. However, both of them are yet not strong enough to creative public awareness and critical mass.

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Sustainability and eco-friendly towers have been among the most discussed topics of contemporary high-rise building design. High-rise buildings have been an important part of the modern economy with their concentration of human capital and branding value for the urban context. In addition, during the recent years, to address the problems of sprawl, environmental, and ecological concerns, sustainable high-rise building design has gained further significance and visibility in architecture and planning literature. In existing literature, sustainability of high-rises is defined mainly through ecological design and green architecture principles in individual building scale. However, sustainability in the case of high-rises remains an ill-defined term, as there is neglect of further long term effects of these buildings on the social, cultural, economic, and resiliency contexts of cities. When not integrated with the broader urban context, sustainability falls into the gap to be perceived as "greenwash", which stands for a superficially-employed concept used as a fashionable branding strategy. Within this general framework, this study will examine the emerging towers in Bayraklı, İzmir, which is designated by the local government as a high-rise development zone. The study will focus on high-rise buildings (completed and under construction) in relation to the perception of sustainability and question whether or not sustainability is used as a greenwash branding strategy or a contextual element that is well-embedded in architectural design process and urban planning decisions. The method of research will be a descriptive case study through semi-structured interviews with the design team and real estate professionals of the buildings, as well as media analysis and consideration of the local municipality reports OPEN ACCESSBuildings 2015, 5 835 about Bayraklı. The results indicate that sustainability has become a principle embraced and advertised in the building scale as an environmental concern more than it is embraced in the urban and social context.

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